"In 1993, a good friend of mine who had recently moved to Livingston, Montana introduced me to Jim Harrison. He had flown to Wisconsin to join me for a weekend of waterfowl hunting and brought with him Harrison’s The Woman Lit by Fireflies, which he was convinced I’d like. I read the book the following week and felt it had cast a spell on me. I called my friend and thanked him profusely for introducing me to Harrison. Then I read everything else Harrison had written, including his poetry (Harrison considered himself, first and foremost a poet), which I found as evocative as his novellas and novels. I especially admired Harrison’s attention to the details of a landscape. Harrison, in turn, led me to a group of Western writers—Thomas McGuane, William Kittredge, Ivan Doig, and Cormac McCarthy, to name only a few—who would have a profound effect on my writing."

"There is a film called Jeremiah Johnson that was directed by Sydney Pollack with Robert Redford. It’s about 1830s mountain men, and I’ve always been fascinated by those guys who, in the 1830s, when the West was still totally wild ? there were no homesteaders, no settlers ? guys who would go out there and live in the mountains amidst the Indians and carve out a living, catching beaver and muskrat and whatever else they were catching, skinning them and bringing the hides back, so they could be turned into hats for fashionable people in London. There’s some really great music in it. I loved the nature and the Rocky Mountains; I think it actually was shot in the early days of the Sundance institute out in the Salt Lake area, although the story has it happening in the Rocky Mountains, probably a little east of there. Montana, Wyoming, that area. So, love that film."